I.
we come to among the flotsam and butane slick
a great yellow bruise in the bright shoal water
three of us, initially, peeling away from the dead
dry retching among the rags and body parts
a long steep beach soon teeming
with rising retching spectres
the tail engine still burning out past the reef
we spend the first night foraging in its dull glow
mostly airline meals safe in their cellophane wrap
and a few coconuts that quench our thirst and give some the runs
the chief steward lights a fire
and then we all reel off our names
the forlorn way the lost name themselves
in the fragile flicker of the first warm light
a strangely homogenous gathering
for a flight out of Lombok.
and no children.
the youngest, in her torn uniform, won’t stop crying.
II.
this chief steward is a short man with a porn star mustache
who holds up his Zippo like a talisman
to regale us all with its provenance -
not the object but the invention -
devised to light first time in the trenches
to save the lives of bored sentries on the step
first strike of a match the sniper notices
second strike in the damp cold the sniper takes aim
and on the third strike....
too tidy to be anything but apocryphal
but I guess it helps to keep us all distracted
while the tail engine slowly burns out
and the stars punch through like a billion tears
III.
this steward tells us all about himself -
an essential perquisite for the pocket dictator.
in that tone that invites no follow-up -
charred stump of a voice, the gin-flecked irises
Manila-born grew up in Melbourne
way way to the south of here, ha ha
calls himself Steve now as Australians tend to do.
I do not like Australians as a rule
nor this Steve with his dark relish for the trenches.
they are too straight-talking to be trusted.
he lit us a fire muttered some prayer to the setting sun
and by this I will watch him
while he pairs us all off
for burial duty at first light.
I cannot sleep by the sobbing girl
and so watch Steve tend his precious fire
his power in the dark
IV.
a healthy adult human will on average
remember three names on introduction
a sociopath on a sliding scale
a psycopath one too many
Steve remembers my name because I say the least,
the sobbing girl’s because they have a history
an obvious history, even to the leering salesman
with the Joker’s scar
who tells us all with a Welsh sigh
that he got it on a Valentine’s date gone wrong
the two American girls Steve wants to fuck
think this funny in that way of the truly stranded
that faces, not names, are the scaffold
on which to hang this night
is obvious even to the sobbing girl
(whose name I forget)
who rasps through her dry sobs
stop bossing people, Steven!
you’re not the boss, you’re not the boss of anyone
V.
I wake to him watching me.
I give him a minute and then open my eyes.
when you’re ready there’s something I want you to see
he says with his back turned to me.
pokes at the fire like a caged bear
while one of the American girls rolls over
the beach lies on a roughly north-south axis
the rising sun is eclipsed by the charred tail
he leads me south to where the currents
have coralled most of the corpses and debris
the modern commercial jet liner
comprises over a million working parts
he picks one up and tosses it
as though searching for the one that got us in this fix
some bodies
have somehow made their way past the tideline
Steve stands among a crowd of human footprints
and prods one with his foot. it flinches.
some muscle reflex, or maybe gas.
I have seen corpses explode in the African heat.
I want to ask about the footprints -
all different shapes and sizes -
but our bronzed squat Aussie prods the corpse again
and again until it emits a low growl like a cougar.
what I assume is its severed arm
lies a few metres away
gnawed by something in the night
it appears this island’s big enough for predators
and while my crocodile hunter opines
I swear its bloated fingers form a fist
clutch a fistful of sand like a baby would a mother’s cheek.
VI.
there is another Australian in our party
so quiet we barely notice him.
Tim or Tom. polite enough. not one to watch.
he wanders off to the south headland alone
props himself on the limestone scree
and combs the horizon for ships.
Steve found a box of flares
but the sea got to them
so our quiet Australian just sits and waits
and hopes somehow a ship will spot our smoke.
so that leaves 11 pairs
for the grim chore of burying the dead.
there are the two American girls
two Brazilians, Steve and the crying girl
a Japanese and a Hawaiin
quite the collection
I could go on but I won’t.
I have warmed to none of them
except maybe the crying girl
who I hear Steve call Abby
she is beginning to get her bearings, acclimatise
there is a sliver of steeliness in her that I like.
I was hoping to pair with her
to see how she handles the dead
but like I say, she and Steve have a history
and he is proprietorial about his women.
he is, after all, an Australian.
VII.
the island, by my rough estimate,
sits on the north-east fringe of the Indonesian archipelago
we were still climbing when the shuddering started
before the loud crack and a great hole torn down one side
the briefcase cuffed to my wrist
caught the air marshall flush on the temple
killed him instantly, mercifully.
I used his Glock to shoot off the cuff
some fragments are still buried in my arm
strange how the army never leaves a man
we levelled out for a moment
the pilots probably broke their arms trying
and then suddenly there was the sea
looming up and then all about us
people fighting with their buckles
then flailing around as the water rose
aisles of wide-eyed dead I had to wade through
to make for the yawning mouth of light.
two days, maybe three to get my story straight
before the launches get here
between Lombok and Mindanao
for better or for worse
you are never too far from anything
VIII.
and so the sun has now climbed
the three tiers of shale cloud
that suggest to me an island nearby
to the others nothing but a coming storm
the clouds are an ugly grey
like Mindanoa. not far.
but for now we are here
and we are burying our dead
while the rising mercury
sets off macaw and bush turkey close by in the thickets
and a narrow track leads to a clearing
where a shaft of sunlight points to the very spot
where the pigs have turned the earth
going down to maybe half a metre of forest loam
which is fortunate because we are using fragments
of fuselage as shovels and picks
pretty soon we have a deep wide hole
perhaps just deep enough for half the dead
there are 57 of them on a rough count,
all the pieces put back together
we finally hit a tangle of steely roots
and then what looks like a floor of shale
and that’s the point at which
we begin to heap the bodies
until even the bodies seem to say
no more
you’re the army man, Steve tells me
as the two American girls continue to work like Trojans
you tell us when they’re high enough
and so
he knows, or thinks he knows
what lengths a man will go to
IX.
there is a Belgian with a dry cough
who won’t stop saying sorry
this rangy ginger has befriended, or been,
by an old Nebraska widow, a poet apparently
who spends most of her time rubbing his back
whispering sssshhhh like a leaky tyre
she is a real Pocahontas with some lunar name
armed with what I have no doubt she imagines a penetrating look
I have a suspicion she was seated a few rows back
from the late sky marshall and I
maybe saw me shrug off the flailing arms
of one or two of those we are now so busy burying
no-one’s phone survived the blue-arc plunge
other than this one phlegmatic Belgian’s
Christ knows how, afterall
we all found ourselves in the same deep water
the ones afflicted by the coconut water
used it to find their way to a quiet place in the dark forest
and yet! he gasps between dry rasping coughs
it remains fully charged!
as we are heaping what remains of the dead
before deciding where to bury them
this Belgian’s phone rings in his pocket.
he coughs. Pocahontas rubs.
the phone rings and mums
glows like a hot ember through his cheap Belgian gabardine
until the two Americans cease
the work of twenty men for a moment
shift their bras their summer shorts
to ask the obvious question:
dude, aren’t you gonna answer that?
which prompts another round of coughing
and so Pocahontas takes matters into her own hands
literally. the puzzled look on the Belgian’s moon face
suggests it has been quite some time
since a woman thrust her hand into his pocket
she holds it up much like Steve held forth his Zippo
obviously at a loss what to do next
so I snatch it from her, put it on speaker
you have Bertrand’s phone, wheezes the Belgian
nothing, just air. dry troubled air.
tu as le telephone de Bertrand...
at the prompting of the young Americans
I press the volume button all the way up
nothing. just static.
Tiens? this is Bertrand, can I help?
fuck dude! can I help? we’re fucking stranded
with a heap of bodies on a beach....
Pocahontas shooshes like a natural
there is a tinny scraping like someone unscrewing a heavy lid
and then a low sob, barely audible
and then another and another and then nothing
I hold the dead phone out like an offering
but no-one seems to want to touch it
finally the Belgian takes it between thumb and forefinger
like a soiled nappy
what the hell was that?
one of the Americans speaks our thoughts as they were born to do
hey! you see that? says her friend
pointing at the pile of corpses festering in the heat
X.
let’s call them Trudy 1 and Trudy 2
they seem in an awful hurry to bury these bodies
we gotta move these things
the slightly slimmer one says
a lot of crows feet for a woman her age
like I say, it’s faces not names that matter in extremis
so she goes to drag one off the pile
the one Steve had been toeing up the beach
and it swivels its head and growls low
flexes its jaw like a muscle memory
crows feet drops it with a squeal
and it writhes silently for a moment
and that’s when I notice our quiet Australian
running down the hard sand flailing his arms
he seems to be pointing everywhere at once
everywhere, that is, but the sea
I’m digging a fucking hole right now!
says Trudy 1 marching off into the thickets
I look up the beach again to see
a pillar of sand and smoke where our quiet Aussie had been
a scrap of t-shirt floats down
like a bloodied burning feather onto the gleaming sand
and then a rush of hot air from the jungle behind
and bits of Trudies 1 and 2 shower down around us
and the crying girl stops crying
and the screaming starts
and whatever dragged those bodies past the tideline
is on the move again in the thickets
the ground heaves and flexes like a muscle
and the forest comes alive with frantic birdsong
XI.
and that’s the story as far as I remember.
I am the sole survivor of that dreadful night
the forest kept groaning and heaving
and the old mines kept getting triggered by those things
the fire kept them away for a while
until Steve tripped a mine and blew it all to hell
and they kept coming and tripping mines
and flying all about with the tortured glee of rabid bats
bits of their old uniforms
settling about me in the water
where I’d taken to that bit of wing
you found me on whistling “who let the dogs out”
the salt water seemed to do for them
like the mind of a thirsty man
- © Justin Lowe 2021
Note: A shit-load of zombies were harmed in the making of this poem.
